News They Don't Want You To Know

No Pay-Wall, Donate To Press Freedom

WPAFB airman sentenced for selling night vision goggles on eBay

The senior airman who stole night vision goggles and other equipment from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and sold them on eBay was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Zachary Sizemore was sentenced to three months in a Community Correctional Facility or Halfway House and is ordered to self-surrender to the U.S. Marshals by noon July 20.

U.S. District Court Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ordered Sizemore to pay restitution of $96,451.60, a forfeiture of that same amount and to be on three years of supervised release. Sizemore was convicted of theft and unlawful sale of government property.

The United States Air Force calculation of the loss based on replacement cost was $185,439.58, according to court records.

Sizemore’s non-binding guideline sentencing range was 10 to 16 months, according to federal prosecutors, who had asked for a 12- to 18-month prison term.

Sizemore admitted to stealing night vision goggles and other equipment and selling it for $154,000 to people in New York and elsewhere from July 2013 until November 2016 when he was arrested in his Huber Heights home, according to the criminal complaint.

A May 5, 2017 statement from Sizemore included in court records read, in part: “Beginning in 2013, a year after I was hired in the armory I began to take items from that location. In the armory there was a lack of accountability for almost everything except the weapons and ammo.

“After realizing that no one took inventory, or actually counted certain items I decided that I could make some extra money if I sold one.”

Sizemore’s statement said his stealing and selling of items continued after a deployment to Kuwait. He wrote that when he returned “the accountability was better, but a lot of items were left un-inventoried.”

In a sentencing memo filed earlier in the case, Sizemore’s attorney wrote that Sizemore is a “remorseful and respectful 25-year-old who took what he thought was (excess) equipment from his Air Force base job and sold it on (eBay),” his federal public defender wrote. “His actions ended his military career, sunk him and his wife into financial ruin, and subjected him to a military court martial.”

The defense memo said Sizemore was between tours of duty overseas, had recently gotten married, that he felt betrayed and hurt by his family and that left him with a “deep reservoir of financial insecurity.”

The memo also said: “The pull of material things was strong, and as everyone knows, greed is never a satisfied customer.”

Attached along with the memo were character statements, including letters of support from WPAFB Staff Sgt. Isaac Galvan, Dayton police Maj. Brian Johns, Sizemore’s wife and her parents.

An earlier sentencing memo written by assistant U.S. attorney Nomi Berenson said a person who purchased a night vision goggle (NVG) and a mini-thermal monocular (MTM) is a foreign national and that “had law enforcement authorities not intercepted the packages, they would have been exported from the United States.”